Ruins, Refugees, and Urban Abandonment in Bronze Age China

Abstract

Multiple episodes of urban abandonment took place in Bronze Age China, each with its consequences for reconfiguration of socio-political networks. By exploring the causes and the dynamics of these ruptures in urban traditions, this paper reveals the political nature of Bronze Age cities through the vantage point of their demise, where drastic actions of planned urban abandonment were initiated by new regimes to sever the symbolic ties connecting the population of the fallen regimes with their ancestral places. The emergence of commercial cities that outlived the regime change was a relatively late phenomenon of the late first millennium bc. The study of urban development in early China, therefore, needs to address these political ruptures and recognize the cultural significance of urban ruins in the making of the historical landscape, especially how the core components of old cities were transferred to new locations, and how such urban relocation processes changed through time.